1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to radio communications. More specifically, the present invention relates to radio receivers that operate in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) weather alert broadcasting system.
2. Description of the Related Art
NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) is a United States government service that broadcasts National Weather Service (NWS) warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information twenty-four hours a day from a network of radio transmitters located throughout the United States. NOAA Weather Radio is known as the “voice of the National Weather Service,” and is provided as a public service by the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The NOAA Weather Radio network comprises more than 650 broadcasting stations located in the 50 states and near adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and U.S. Pacific Territories. The NWS employs medium and low power transmitters deployed according to a frequency reuse plan to provide localized radio coverage within the network. Radio coverage areas may be in the range of approximately fifty miles, although actual radio coverage areas vary greatly due to the vagaries of radio wave propagation. Seven frequencies are set aside in the frequency reuse plan, and, they are tabulated in Table 1 below.
TABLE 1162.400 MHz162.425 MHz162.450 MHz162.475 MHz162.500 MHz162.525 MHz162.550 MHz
Weather radios equipped with a special alarm tone feature are known in the prior art that can communicate an alert and provide immediate information about life-threatening situations whenever the alarm tone is received by the radio. During an emergency, National Weather Service forecasters interrupt routine weather radio programming and send out a special tone that is received by these radios and used to activate an alarm in weather radios located within the radio coverage area of any given NWR broadcast station.
Beyond weather information, the NWR network includes an “all hazards” capability. NOAA Weather Radio also broadcasts warning and post-event information for all types of hazards both natural (such as earthquakes and volcano activity) and technological (such as chemical releases or oil spills). In a cooperative effort with other Federal agencies and the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Alert System (EAS), NOAA Weather Radio is thus the “all hazards” radio network, making it the single source for the most comprehensive weather and emergency information available to the public.
In recent years, the National Weather Service has improved the NOAA Weather Radio system to provide localized information and warning alerts, which go beyond the aforementioned radio coverage frequency reuse plan. The name of this localized service is Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME). To achieve the localized service, the NWR system broadcasts specific SAME codes along with the standard weather broadcasts from its various broadcast stations. The SAME codes identify the type of emergency and the specific geographic area affected by a particular emergency. Weather alert radios are known in the art that receive, interpret, and display information about the received SAME codes so that users can determine if an emergency might affect them in particular.
Each SAME alert includes at least one Federal Information Processing System (FIPS) code that identifies a specific geographic area, which is defined by the National Weather Service. It is known in the art to program weather radios to receive a particular NWR frequency and to activate an alarm consistent with a received SAME code when a previously programmed FIPS code is received within a SAME message. Thus, the system provides geographic information about which users a particular alert message is directed to, as well as specific information about the nature of the alert. The FIPS codes are six-digit numeric codes that define a geographic region, usually about the size of a typical state county or parish in the US. The first digit in a FIPS code generally identifies the county subdivision, the next two digits identify the state, and the last three digits identify a county or parish. For example, the FIPS code for Tarrant County, Texas is “048439”. A listing of all FIPS codes is available from NOAA's NWS Internet web site. The SAME message alert codes cover a wide range of weather conditions, natural hazards, and technology hazards. By way of example, these include hazards related to avalanches, blizzards, civil emergencies, floods, fires, hazardous materials, high winds, hurricanes, law enforcement, radiological hazards, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, winter storms, and other hazards.
In order for a user to benefit from the NWR alert broadcast system they must have a compliant radio receiver properly programmed and in operation to receive and decode SAME messages, so as to communicate alerts as they occur from time to time. Programming requires a user to read and understand the radio's user manual, and to operate the radio in such a way as to program the proper information into the radio. These operations are naturally prone to human error from time to time. Since there are plural FIPS code's and plural radio frequencies employed by the NWR broadcast system, it is essential that users program their radios accurately. For example, it is quite common for a radio receiver located in a particular geographic location to receive two, three, or more NWR broadcast frequencies. Each of these frequencies may transmit SAME messages having one, two, or more FIPS codes encoded therein. If the user tunes the radio to the wrong frequency, they may not receive their geographic FIPS encoded SAME messages. Even if the radio has plural FIPS codes programmed therein, which is known in the art, tuning the radio to the wrong frequency may still lead to missed SAME messages. Thus there is a need in the art for an apparatus and method that better ensures that users of NWR compliant radio receivers are programmed and tuned to the appropriate radio frequency, without the need for extensive manual programming operations by the user.